trio

suspension

Degree show plan. No.2

She opens the door to a small room.

On the walls are an erratic sprawl of pictures, some in

frames, some pinned to the wall with brass tacks.

Photographs of days past, paintings of days dreamt up.

To the left is a large glass fronted dresser filled

with a mixture of crockery and dinner ware.

A lone tea cup, with purple heather and a gold rim,

sits on the top shelf filled with foreign currency.

Out of date and out of use.

The house is calm and quiet.

The girl sits in a small green arm chair,

folds her hands in her lap and closes her eyes.

the windows are too big and the plotter is too small.

Home Sweet Home

sunshine yellow, cherry blossom, calligraphic words,

soft images and a reminder of home.

a mock-up of the sketch below, though obviously on my bedroom window rather than the real window i will be using - the real space is much much larger!!

the images feature a lot of light and are themselves delicate and subtle, it feels like a logical move to use the windows to illuminate them and also, in the sunshine, to cast their image throughout the room, to give the whole room a feeling that is just unachievable from framed images.

the light will shine through the images, illuminating the text, revealing themselves through the delicate fabric.

planning

My plan for the degree show. I am using four large windows, on which I will be sticking four large images that have been printed onto tracing paper or a light fabric such as muslin. In front of these images, I will hang my wish lists or extracts from the lists that are also printed onto fabric and hung from the ceiling. The idea is to create a kind of multi-layered experience. As the work is about past and future, memory and bringing elements of the past into the future, it seems to make sense to have layers of image and text, in front and behind, that the viewer can walk around and re-vist the words and images, as one does their memories.

transparent

Recently I have moved away from the idea of creating a writing desk set up as an installation for the exhibition.

My images are quite delicate and subtle, I think perhaps I don't need lots of bells and whistles to make it look good, perhaps I need something more subtle and delicate to compliment the work.

I've had thoughts about perhaps using the windows of the exhibition space to hang my work, perhaps sticking the work on the windows, or covering them entirely. Light is an important factor in my work so to use the natural light seems like a logical step.

the infinate (ish) wish list

I have been toying with the idea of using "Halfway House" as a title for part of this project. I think of my student home as a kind of home-between-homes, not somewhere permanent, and I thought "Halfway House" sounded like it described it quite well.

Until I discovered that a Halfway House is actually a place for people with chronic mental disorders, people who have just been released from jail and people with substance abuse issues, before they are reintegrated back into society. So maybe it is not quite what I meant!

However, after a little google of it and discovering the meaning, a lot of it actually still relates to my work.

I am exploring the transition between student life and moving into 'real' life, leaving the family home for good and becoming a contributing member of society.

So in a way, my current house is sort of a half way house. It is the transitory place between student life and 'real' life.

"She wanted to explore it further and her approach became more akin to an anthropologist examining social behaviour in a foreign land, except of course that this was her family."

"people's understanding of domestic architecture is so often inextricably linked to their memories of that place. There are many ways in which a family defines itself and its sense of identity that are inscribed in the home"

a new light to bathe in.

forget me not.

The Wish Box

THE WISH BOX

Please take a piece of paper and write on it something that you wish for. It can be something physical, a material possession, something emotional,something you hope for in the future, something you wish for another person; whatever you wish.

Please place your wish in the box provided.

You may wish as many times as you like.

Thank-you.

new additions

Two concertina books form the latest additions to a series of books I am working on based around the idea of the domestic space and wishes.

The title "A Room Of One's Own" is not a reference to the famous book by Virginia Woolf, but in fact a literal reference to a longing for my own personal space.

"Occasional Quiet" is self explantory.

The text comes in two forms but from the same source. One is letter-pressed and one is typed on the typewriter.

The text itself comes from a previous book I made entitled "The Dream House" - a list of all the things, material possessions and otherwise, that I would have in my ideal home.

Text is coupled with images of student filth. I will admit to using old images for this, as it was just an experiment. I will also admit that the photos were taken in a house I lived in last year.

My intention with this work is firstly to include something that will offset the "twee-ness" of the writing, and also to introduce some images that will truly show the reasons behind my longing for domestic perfection.

numero duo.

Letterpress no. 2

Wishes....

A wish from my "wishes" book.

An excerpt from my book "The Dream House"

Unfortunately there aren't enough letters to do the full list, so I may have to re-think the font if I want to re-produce the whole book in letter press.

replies

Postcards from my parents sent from Germany - nice post marks!

Old, new, peace and quiet.

"Home Comforts"

The above images are taken from the series "Home Comforts". The series explores the way we treat a home when it is temporary and does not belong to us. The ironic title shows my longing for a place to call my own, where it is clean and comfortable and I don't have to spend my days cleaning up other peoples mess!

I can feel a lot of the elements from this previous project creeping into my current project. At the moment I am creating wish lists of the way I want my ideal home to be, I am longing for a clean and tidy house where I can keep my possessions without fear of them being broken by an overexcited housemate. I long for peace and quiet and not to be made to feel guilty or boring for wanting this.

Anna Fox has two projects which greatly interest me. The first is entitled "Made In Europe", in which she asks teenagers to photograph their bedrooms exactly as they are and to write down their hopes, dreams and fears for the future. I have only read about this, I haven't actually seen the end product, but I love the personal nature of it, the curiosity of seeing another persons bedroom, the peeking-into-a-diary feel of reading someone else's hopes and dreams. I would like to undertake this brief myself as an exercise as I feel it really ties in perfectly with the exploration of personal space/thoughts and wishes that I am looking at myself.

"My Mother's Cupboards and My Father's Words"

The second project of Anna Fox's that I am really interested in is called "My Mother's Cupboards and My Father's Words". The outcome of this project is a small book containing images of her mother's very neatly arranged cupboards, juxtaposed with her father's brutal vocal outbursts. Again, it is the curiosity of looking at another persons life on such a personal level that draws me in. Also it made me think of my "Home Comforts" series, coupled with my very intimately typed out wish lists. Perhaps it would be interesting to couple the two together, would they have the same jarring effect as Anna Fox's coupling of beauty and horror? I would also like to record my wish lists onto tape, (dictophone perhaps?) for them to be viewed at the same time as the images. I don't know if the sound of my voice would work well with it, or if I would be too uncomfortable to speak on tape, but I think it will be interesting to find out.

stamps

to tide me over until i can get back to the letterpress!

a childish method for a grown-up task.

sometimes i like to get all my cameras out just to remind myself that i do actually quite like photography. my favourite one is the only one that doesn't work. such is life!

favourite.

irrelevant

Irrelevant to the project but I had issues with my food processor

and this is now seriously

hindering my writing/photo taking/typing etc. Problematic.

Grandma and Bernard

A 'two-for-one' response from Grandma and Bernard. They also sent it in an envelope, I really should have been more specific!

The top one is from Grandma and the bottom is from Bernard.

Eleanor

It is interesting, or perhaps it is to be expected, that my sisters memories and the things she misses are almost exactly the same as the things I wrote. I didn't tell her to write specifically about missing childhood though, so it is interesting that she chose to write about that on her postcard, when she could have written anything.

I did mean for her to write my address on the postcard and send it as one normally would so I could have the postmark and stamp on it but never mind, I should have been more clear in my instructions! I will know for next time!

Yours sincerely....

A letter sent to my Mum, Dad, Grandparents and Sister. The letter is accompanied by a postcard with one of my images on the back. The letter instructs the recipient to write on the postcard a hope, a memory, a wish, or just a note to me and post it back to me.

By including the thoughts of my close family members in my project, I hope to create a more comprehensive view of my life for someone else viewing the work. I think it is important to see how people close to me view life and view themselves, or to see how they remember things happening.